2947 W. Anderson Lane, Austin, TX 78757
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Author: Jewls Krueger
On the night of December 6, 1991, four teenage girls were bound, shot, and killed inside an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop in northwest Austin, Texas. The killer set the store on fire in an effort to destroy evidence, leaving investigators with a horrific scene and one of the most notorious cold cases in Texas history.
For more than 34 years the case remained officially unsolved, but in October 2025 Austin police announced they had identified the killer as Robert Eugene Brashers, a serial murderer who had died by suicide in 1999.
The four victims were 17 year old Jennifer Harbison, her 15 year old sister Sarah Harbison, 17 year old Eliza Thomas, and 13 year old Amy Ayers. Jennifer and Eliza were close friends and both worked at the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! franchise location in the Hillside Center, a strip mall on West Anderson Lane in northwest Austin. Sarah and her best friend Amy Ayers had come to the shop that evening to spend time with the older girls and get a ride home at closing time. The four girls had become friends in part through their shared involvement in the Future Farmers of America program at school.
Shortly before midnight on Friday, December 6, 1991, an Austin patrol officer spotted flames coming from the yogurt shop. When Austin firefighters extinguished the blaze, they discovered the bodies of all four girls inside. Each had been bound with their own clothing, shot in the head, and the shop had been doused with flammable material and set on fire.
Two different caliber weapons were used in the killings, leading investigators to initially believe there were at least two attackers. The combination of fire damage, water from the sprinkler system, and contamination by first responders compromised much of the physical evidence at the scene.
Memorial for the victims - Copyright Morbid Tourism
The investigation generated thousands of tips and dozens of false confessions over the following years, but no arrests were made until 1999. That year, Austin police arrested four men who had been teenagers at the time of the murders: Maurice Pierce, Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, and Forrest Welborn. The case against them was built primarily on disputed confessions obtained from Springsteen and Scott during long interrogations.
Springsteen was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to death. Scott was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison. Both convictions were overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals between 2006 and 2007 on Sixth Amendment grounds. In 2009, the remaining charges against Springsteen and Scott were dismissed after new DNA testing of evidence from the scene revealed an unidentified male profile that did not match any of the four men. Charges against Welborn had already been dropped in 2000, and Pierce spent more than three years in jail before his charges were dismissed in 2003. Pierce later died after being shot by an Austin police officer during a 2010 confrontation.
Further Reading
For years investigators tried to identify the mystery DNA profile recovered from the scene. The case finally broke in 2025 when an Austin cold case detective resubmitted a .380 caliber cartridge that had been found in a drain at the scene to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. The cartridge was linked to a 1998 murder in Kentucky tied to Robert Eugene Brashers.
Subsequent DNA testing identified Brashers as the source of the unknown profile from the yogurt shop. Brashers was a known serial offender who had already been linked through DNA evidence to a 1990 South Carolina strangulation, a 1997 rape in Tennessee, and the 1998 shooting of a mother and daughter in Missouri. He killed himself during a police standoff in Kennett, Missouri, in January 1999.
In October 2025, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis publicly identified Brashers as the sole suspect in the yogurt shop murders. In February 2026, Travis County Judge Dayna Blazey formally exonerated Pierce, Springsteen, Scott, and Welborn. In May 2026, the city of Austin agreed to pay the four men and Pierce's family a combined $35 million settlement.
The shop as of May 2026 - Copyright Morbid Tourism
The I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop where the murders took place was located in the Hillside Center strip mall on West Anderson Lane in northwest Austin. The shop itself closed permanently after the murders. Today the shop is a spa and beauty retail location.
A memorial plaque was placed in the parking lot area outside of the yogurt shop which contains the names of all four victims.
Please be respectful of the businesses and customers in the area, and stay on public roads and walkways at all times.
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